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Its a lovely smiling picture of the disabled placard. I will just comment on the gentleman and the British Labour Party with this from Rabbi Cooper of the Simon Weisenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles--see: "A dying tree in England: Labour Party is on verge of uprooting Jewish legitimacy, safety," http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/399781-a-dying-tree-in-england-labour-party-is-on-verge-of-uprooting-jewish.

[I do note that Mr. Buruma's article was written after his own paper, The New York Times not noted as a "Zionist rag," at least noted Mr. Abbas's "new low" in his harangue about Jews (not Medieval Zionists) for 2,000 years being money lenders, etc. and rightfully hated and expelled from various countries (and worst)--mild language compared to the "Great Slaughter" that Hamas promises. --But tMr. Buruma is too busy with Netanyahu's "racism" to notice anything wrong in these pretty words. Nor did he notice the full context of what the good mayor defends said (see below). I do wonder about Mr. Buruma's "objectivity" for what seems to notices and does not. But to the main event:]

"A tree planted as a Holocaust memorial has been badly vandalized twice during a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in Salisbury, England.

Local Member of Parliament (MP) John Glen told the Salisbury Journal that the vandalism was related to “other acts of anti-Semitism,” noting that “many people in Salisbury will be saddened to find out that the Holocaust memorial tree in Churchill Gardens has twice been vandalized in recent weeks. ... The latest acts of vandalism disrespect the memory of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust. They are also a further sign of a worrying trend in our society where extremism is increasingly drifting into the mainstream. We must redouble our efforts to ensure that antisemitism plays no part in our society and politics.”

It’s not just the uprooting of a memorial tree to dead Jews that worry the United Kingdom’s Jews but the uprooting of their legitimacy and safety in England.

The hatred, which legitimizes clear and present dangers to British Jewry, has been emanating from what was the historic political home of British Jewry: the Labour Party. Now led by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party denounced anti-Semitism with a definition that scrubbed the red line where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and anti-Semitism begins.

So, far from combating anti-Semitism, this Labour Party will give its blessing to party members who oppose Israel’s right to exist and who brand Jews as “Nazis.”

According to Dan Hodges in London’s Daily Mail, “Accusing Jews of being traitors to the U.K. will no longer be considered longer anti-Semitic, just a bit ‘wrong.’”

Here’s a sampler of anti-Semitic gems emanating from Labourites:

A recent Facebook post by a Labour councilor, Damien Enticott, suggested that “Talmud Jews” kill Christian children to drink their blood.

At a 2015 campaign rally, Corbyn led a chorus of the “Red Flag” with supporters who said that Israel is responsible for ISIS. His supporters openly ranted about the “ugly Israeli species.” Corbyn mocked critics by appointing two virulently anti-Israel MPs, Kate Osamor and Sarah Champion, to lead the Party’s unconvincing effort to repair relations with the Jewish community.

At the Bear Pit, an outdoor popular venue in Bristol, a giant campaign banner showed Prime Minister Theresa May with Star of David-shaped earrings, a banner that some observers described as anti-Semitic. The banner listed positive statements about Corbyn and negative ones about May.

In March 2017, before former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was expelled by the Labour Party, he told reporters that there had been “real collaboration” between the Nazis and Jews. “[Hitler] didn’t just sign the deal,” Livingstone said. “The SS set up training camps so that German Jews who were going to go there (Palestine) could be trained to cope with a very different sort of country when they got there.” He refused to retract his statement that Hitler was “a staunch Zionist.”

In August 2017, at the popular Edinburgh Festival Fringe, U.K. political activist Jackie Walker appeared in her one-woman show, “Lynching,” portraying herself as a martyr of a Zionist-orchestrated conspiracy. When faced by a torrent of Jewish protests, she “apologized” but did not retract her Farrakhan-inspired slander — that “many Jews were the chief financiers of the slave trade.” Walker, the former vice chair of Corbyn’s grassroots political army, Momentum, also said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Remembrance Day was open to all people who’ve experienced Holocaust?”

In January 2018, Corbyn’s International Holocaust Memorial Day statement left out one word: Jew.

In March, Corbyn criticized the removal of British graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman’s “Freedom for Humanity” mural that depicted Jewish-looking businessmen and bankers counting money and playing monopoly on the backs of the poor. Corbyn expressed sympathy for the artist: “Why? You are in good company. Rockefeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin."

In April, after 2,000 people marched on Parliament demanding action against anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, two Jewish leaders, Jonathan Arkush and Jonathan Goldstein, were invited to a sit-down with Corbyn. Arkush faulted him for “repeatedly [being] found alongside people with blatantly anti-Semitic views.”

On Passover, Corbyn attended a non-traditional Jewish Seder with a group that wants to do away with Israel. Later that week, Corbyn’s message was read outside 10 Downing Street condemning Israel’s “illegal and inhumane” actions against Palestinians protesting on the Gaza border. (Those protests/riots, organized by Hamas, featured firebombs, Molotov cocktails and burning tires.) Corbyn later refused to condemn Hamas for hundreds of rockets fired into Israel.

And now, one of Corbyn’s closest allies on Labour’s ruling body at a meeting attended by Corbyn, blames-not anti-Semites but Jewish “Trump fanatics” for bad PR. Peter Willsman also demanded “proof” from 68 rabbis, who warned Jew-hatred had become “severe and widespread” within the Labour Party.

Finally, Boris Johnson, a Conservative leader, has challenged Corbyn to put an end to his party’s mainstreaming of anti-Semitism. If he won’t, there’s little chance that the damaged Holocaust Memorial Tree — or British Jewry — will ever fully blossom again if Corbyn becomes the U.K.’s next prime minister.

In the meantime, be prepared for even worse to come from the Labour Party headed by the incorrigible Corbyn, who will be remembered by many as the spiritual heir of the U.K.’s goose-stepping Sir Oswald Mosley from the 1930s."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean and director of Global Social Action programs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization named for the famed Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor and headquartered in Los Angeles.

How low can you go, Ian Buruma? To defend Israel and zionism...?The core ideology of Corbyn and the left is equality, something one cannot say of zionism, which reserves higher rights for Jews than for Palestinians in the Holy land. Anti-zionism is a kind of anti-racism.

Historically, the origins of 'radical' anti-Semitism go right back to the time of the Crusades and the 'pauperes' in France in the thirteenth century. Revolutionary millenarianism in the Radical Reformation in Germany (e.g. Münster) was also violently anti-Semitic. Cromwell stood out against it in Britain, as did most of the independents and sectaries, but it was revived by the anarcho-Syndicalists and passed into the Labour party through Guild Socialism and the Fabians. The Webbs, in particular, were anti-Semitic, and Oswald Mosley belonged to the radical Left of the Labour Party. Livingstone is part of a 'dishonourable' tradition in the Party which has been given a new lease of life by Corbyn's support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran-backed forces in Syria. Although he claims to be anti-war, he is on record as supporting the Cairo Declaration when he was Chairman of 'Stop the War'. This stated that British Service people in the Middle East were 'legitimate targets'. He is more dangerous than many suppose, which is why I am no longer a member of the Labour Party and hope we will soon have a new, Progressive Labour Party.

The author is creating a misleading impression of a certain mural, painted by an American painter who may well be of Jewish heritage, which represents Rockefellers as well as Rothschilds- i.e. it is not targeting any specific ethnicity or religious faith. Still, to his credit, the then Mayor of Tower Hamlets, who is of Muslim Bangladeshi heritage wanted to take it down because vilification of any religion or ethnicity is wholly unacceptable to the working class people of one of London's poorest boroughs.

Corbyn has very good relations with Left wing, anti-Zionist, Jewish groups like 'Jewdas'. It should also be remembered that some Jewish sects reject Israel on religious grounds. More generally, the old Jewish Left wing had put its faith in a Socialistic solution to Israel's problems which would have created solidarity between all faiths in that country on the basis of class, not creed.

Buruma is correct, however, that a very nasty type of anti-Semitism is trying to disguise itself as anti-Zionism/anti-Capitalism. It is wholly irrational. Still, we have to accept that some 'virtue signalling' amongst Jewish intellectuals has been going on such that more and hysterical bile is being spouted and more and more extreme positions are being taken. This is very damaging to the ethos of the Labour Party. However the proper way forward is to bring prosecutions under relevant Hate Speech laws and also to penalise 'boycott' type policies as tortious interference. This should be done in a bi-partisan manner.

I hope people will realise that the British Muslim community will not endorse a crude, divisive, Racialist ideology however much sympathy they may have for Palestinians.

Corbyn purports to act on principle, so it should not be hard for him, and Labour generally, to take a principled stand against both anti-semitism and oppression of the Palestinians. Yet Labour seems incapable of seizing the initiative on any issue during the Tories' meltdown. I worry that, by allowing the problem to fester, Corbyn is leading Labour down George Galloway's path toward bizarre ideas and political irrelevance. Am I right to worry?